


Four Times Tom Zarek Was in Love, and One Time He Wasn't

by Jo Lasalle (Jo_Lasalle)



Category: Battlestar Galactica (2003)
Genre: Five Times, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-10-27
Updated: 2006-10-27
Packaged: 2021-03-09 18:08:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,310
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27860553
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jo_Lasalle/pseuds/Jo%20Lasalle
Summary: Tom Zarek, and time, and people.(Part of a number of stories re-uploaded for archival purposes. It's been over 15 years, and so any tagging or summaries are going to be extremely bare-bones! I tried to time a bulk upload so nobody got 10 separate notifications, but if I did accidentally spam people, my apologies!)
Relationships: Tom Zarek & Laura Roslin, Tom Zarek & Lee Adama
Kudos: 1





	Four Times Tom Zarek Was in Love, and One Time He Wasn't

**Author's Note:**

> Re-uploaded for archival purposes. It's been over 15 years, and so any tagging or summaries are going to be extremely bare-bones.

**#1 Rose**

There is a statue in the main entrance hall that commemorates the signing of the Articles. The first time he saw Inez she came into class late, unimpressed by the whispers and the sneers at an impending dressing-down, explaining that she'd had to walk all the way around to use the south entrance.

"I don't pay tribute to the subjugation of my people," she said, perfectly polite, perfectly preposterous, accepting the laughter she got from the room, and Tom thought she looked hard and beautiful like crystal, so sharp you'd cut yourself touching.

"Well," the professor said; Tom remembers how flustered he was, caught off guard by her lack of embarrassment. "Factor it in next time, would you?"

Two years, a rigged referendum and a spring of riots later, the statue is still there. They never touched it. Wilful destruction wouldn't change the mindset behind its presence, so it will still be there when they'll have gone. But Tom has no sense of defeat. All he feels is clarity of purpose, the thrill of decision in every fast step up the dark staircase.

"What if there was a fire?" he'd asked her one afternoon, lazing around in his narrow bed, licking their wounds from being shouted down in the students' council yet again. "And you had to get out really fast, and the only way was through the main exit--"

She snapped up from sleepiness, careless of the way her elbows dug into his chest, and the look on her face killed the words in his throat. "It's not a joke. Not to me."

No more jokes; no more kidding around. Terry left in the middle of the night, sent off to some off-world school by his parents. Viola came back from the police station with three broken fingers and stopped talking to them. Tom's room has been searched twice, and he avoided arrest at the last rally only because he blended into the crowd of uninterested onlookers by sheer dumb luck. It was days before he stopped seeing contempt in Inez' eyes.

No more pretense, either. It's time.

He makes a racket when he misses the handle of the door to his dorm corridor, but that doesn't matter, nobody will remember. Just a student, stumbling home drunk on a week day. It will be days before they're missed in class.

Inez is sitting on his bed, a backpack as small and tight as his own at her feet, and Tom smiles like a fool when he sees she's lowered the lights and closed the curtains as if they were in a movie; Inez has turned being unimpressed into an art form, but she's no more immune to the thrill of the moment than he is.

She doesn't smile back.

"I have the tickets," he says after he's closed and locked the door, and he's a little out of breath. "And a name in Ephesion where we can stay. From there we can get in touch with other people." He has to stay cool, can't be this high even though he feels drunk on _everything_ , the night and the hush and the blue of Inez' eyes, the steel of her spine. A whole new life, free of compromise.

Inez takes a breath, another one, and between that and her words it rips into him, like the bleed that never happened when he first took her hand. "I'm not sure the time is right."

She says a lot more after that, about waiting and being prepared and we're not done _here_ , we can make a difference here. "It's three months to graduation," is the last thing he hears, before she stops talking to his numb silence.

**#2 Letter**

Another room, in yet another basement. This one smells mouldier than their previous den. Benn says she has a bad feeling about the husband, but they're too close to game time to move again.

"This is crap." Landon slaps the leaflets on the rickety plastic table, looming over them in a crude posture of intimidation. He doesn't try that one often with Tom, but for once he's genuinely enraged, not just engaging in a pissing contest. "This is _bullshit_ ," he piles it on, staring hard at Benn's lowered head, and Tom feels his anger rise, anger that it's like this even here, fighting for dominance and honing in on weakness.

Benn nudges the scattered pages back from the table's edge with an uncertain hand. "It explains why we--"

"We didn't ask you to write a damn _novel_. Do you know what a pain in the ass it's been to get access to that printer?"

It's worse when they're nervous, and they've been getting very nervous. They know the police, can handle them. _Sagittaron Energy_ , a lie of a name if there's ever been one, has a private security force that scares the hell out of Landon and just about everyone else.

Mari is leaning against the wall with her eyes closed but her lips twitching, and John has taken up position outside the door because Benn is not the only one with a bad feeling about their hosts.

"We still have the stuff from last time," Tom interrupts, calm and reasonable, not to defend her but to focus them on the job.

Benn hates it when he takes her side in the group. It was hard getting used to that; he used to hate watching her sit there and take it. He would know what to say; he's _listened_ to, in a way he's only just starting to grasp fully. He could protect her.

But she never lets him. "I didn't come here so that someone else would speak for me," she told him, her own, fragile kind of rage thinning out her voice, that one time he'd cut some self-important pampered thug into ribbons, back before they stopped associating with the student groups. Instead she freezes up, shrinks into a girl who's missed the last bus home and is afraid of the dark, and still she wants no help. There's a strictness to that that he's come to admire.

Under the table, he reaches for her hand. There's no strength in it, no passion. Her passion is all in the words, poured onto the page like a flood of anger and vision, squeezed into masses of tiny font. Utterly unusable for the intended purpose.

**#3 Ring**

It gets easier after he's earned reading privileges. Much less effort to hide pages between pages, circulate them to the blind eye of the old guard in charge of the books, who doesn't like bombs but thinks at least Tom gave them fair warning and picked the bigwigs to fight, which he can respect.

It's still slow going. His hands hurt after hours in the pit, too much sometimes to even hold a pencil, and his eyes are red from dust and strain, and always there's the fear of an unexpected bunk search and having everything taken from him.

He doesn't mind when the pages come back worn and smudged. It's traces of their slave work in every crease and tear; evidence; testimony as much as the words themselves.

Sometimes he still thinks the stone might beat him, or the cold or the endlessness of the days. A deep fall to roaring applause awaits him should he crack even once, take one step back, retract.

But that's not what they'll hear from him. This is, the truth, harsh and damaged but undeniable.

He doesn't know the names of those who follow his writings, but he doesn't have to, because he can tell from their eyes when they look at him, a reflection of himself that's bigger than a tired man in a prisoner's uniform. This is what they'll see of him.

**#4 Mistletoe**

For some reason they end up the last ones awake. It feels a bit like they're standing watch, sitting on the stairs outside the door to the small mess to which Roslin and the priest have retreated. Tom doesn't have to; he's the one who can leave, find himself a warmer, more comfortable place, with a less broody companion. But he stays, curling and stretching his fingers in the pockets of his jacket against the draught from the nearby meat locker.

"Five thirty," Lee asks for the second time since Roslin left. "They'll be here?"

Tom considers pointing out that Captain Apollo appears a little anxious. "They'll be here," he confirms instead, with a little shrug. "Give or take."

Lee's back straightens up in an instant, a charge imminent; Tom gives him a pointed look. "I'm not running a battlestar."

For the first time today, for the first time at all since he told Lee about Adama's return, there's a trace of humour in the twist of Lee's mouth. "No, you run the community center for wayward boys," he says, and Tom laughs in surprise. "How's that working out for you?"

"Oh, you know," Tom says, still grinning. "Taking it one stabbing at a time." Spoken without thinking, and he feels a flare of guilt because it's a cheap shot at the expense of his men, who have come such a long way and carried him so far.

"I heard you have your own cult now. The brotherhood of Tom Zarek."

He's heard that one before, but it amuses him more when Captain Apollo thinks there might be some truth to it. "Feel like joining?" he asks, with his best vote-for-me face. "We throw great parties."

Lee gives a quiet, unexpected laugh, and the next second he freezes, like he's remembered who he's talking to. It looks like conscious decision when he stretches his legs out, sinks back into a slouch. "Not for me, thanks," he says with fake easiness. "I'm not that good at blowing things up."

Tom shakes his head, sighing, and Lee doesn't even look at him. "That was crude."

No reply. Lee checks his watch, then the safety of his gun, then his watch again.

"That was a brave thing you did," Tom says into the quiet. "Turning against your father. Standing up for what you believe."

Utter stillness, then a breath in slow motion. Lee's face comes around, and just for a moment he looks young, the kind of young that takes as stand and _believes_ : that it will make all the difference, that intentions matter.

Then suspicion slams home; Zarek is luring him in, playing his need for approval. Lee might as well say it out loud, he's that transparent.

It takes Tom a second before he obliges, producing a smirk.

Lee seems almost relieved.

"You don't think so?" He sounds sharp to his own ears. He's not even sure why he's prodding, but he gets a glint of satisfaction from the squirm this elicits.

"Probably." Lee shrugs, tense and awkward.

"Well, I'm so glad I could help out then."

"Don't bother," Lee says, and if the toughness is fake the weariness is not. "You're doing this for your own gain."

"Of course." His knees creak when he shifts his legs, and he really wishes for some damn chairs. "That's what I do, as always. Further my own interest."

Lee's sideways glance is uncomfortable, but Tom holds his eyes deliberately. " _She_ , on the other hand, is all about the purity of heart."

Lee all but flinches away, saying nothing.

That one works every time. Tell naïve people about their naivety, and they freeze up trying not to prove the label with their next words, they won't know what to say at all.

He pushes himself up from the stairs, and his cold joints hurt with the sudden movement. Clearly, he's too frakking old to be sitting here all night, having one-sided conversations. There's a cot one deck below with his name on it.

Despite all his efforts to show his contempt, Lee looks confused. Tom decides to let him be. "Don't fall asleep," he says with a mocking look at the closed door behind him.

Lee starts to shake his head but then he stops himself.

"Five thirty," Tom reminds him in a meaningful tone, and now Lee looks annoyed.

"I'll be there."

"I don't doubt it," Tom says, which has no particular meaning but sounds just ironic enough that it'll have Lee irritated for hours. As good-nights go, it will do.

**#5 Vow**

It's a day and a half before someone even thinks of finding a set of scrolls somewhere, and he's shuffled into the president's office like it's just one more item on a hectic agenda to take care of.

He'd never wanted the gods involved; it should just be the people's will, but he raises his hand anyway, and everyone but Roslin looks slightly embarrassed.

He's a good speaker; words normally don't feel this clumsy in his mouth. These ones should not make him feel like an impostor. That's what she thinks him, too, but she has the grace not to show it when he meets her eyes -- _"that I will protect and defend"_ \-- and he probably should not care about that either.

Later she shows him around, tells him about technical details like accommodation that he doesn't care about, while people keep barging in to ask her about orders and directives.

"It's not for long," she says with utter certainty when they stand behind her desk, so calmly that it doesn't even feel like a dare. Then she explains her concerns over their new fresh food supply to him as if they're still allies.

It's seductive, the respect of an adversary, a shifty kind of drug. But she's never forgotten who he is. Neither will he. They stand for different things. They'll stand opposed in elections, and he will want to win.

She says it's all workable despite the problems, passing him the fact sheet with a small smile.

He will.


End file.
